Just finished listening to Daisy Jones & The Six on audiobook. There are a couple of quotes that really hit me as I listened to this book. Here they are:

Daisy:

“I was caught in a world of my own ego. I had this validation I’d been looking for for such a long time, but on the other hand I was so unsatisfied in so many ways. Back then I had an oversized sense self-importance and absolutely no self-worth. It didn’t matter how gorgeous I was, or how great my voice was, or what magazine I was on the cover of; I mean there were a lot of teenage girls that wanted to grow up and be me in the late 70’s, and I was keenly aware of that, but the only reason people thought I had everything is because I had all the things you can see …I had none of the things you can’t. And a lot of good dope can make it so you can’t tell whether you’re happy or not; it can make you think having people around is the same thing as having friends. I knew getting high wasn’t a long-term solution, but god it’s so easy; it’s just so easy. But of course it’s no easy at all either, because one minute you’re just trying to nurse a wound, and the next you’re desperately trying to hide the fact that you’re now a jury-ridged, taped-up, shortcutted mess of a person; and the wound you were nursing has become an abscess. But I was skinny and pretty, so who cared, right?”  

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Simone:

“I was getting a lot of phone calls from Daisy at all hours of the day. I’d say, ‘Let me come get you.’ And she’d refuse. I thought about trying to force her into rehab, but you can’t do that. You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health; and you can’t hate someone back to health. And no matter how right you are about something it doesn’t mean they will change their mind. I used to rehearse speeches, and interventions, and consider flying to where she was, and dragging her off that stage! As if, if I could just get the words right, I could convince her to get sober. You drive yourself crazy trying to put words in some magical order that will unlock their sanity. And when it doesn’t work you think, ‘I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t talk to her clearly enough.’ But at some point you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody, and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall. And that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own. Knowing they might well drowned and you’ll have to watch.”  

Taylor Jenkins Reid

:::

Encore…

“So much of daily life comprises mostly of harmless posturing. We must pretend to be more amazing than we are . . . we spend much of our day lying . . . Art undoes all that. Art is an exercise in not lying, for once.”

Harrison Scott Key